School choice has big impact on budgets

Monday

Each year, millions of dollars in state funding flows from school system to school system, following students whose parents send them to a neighboring community.

In Massachusetts, a 1991 initiative known as inter-district school choice gives parents the option to enroll their children in a public school district in a community other than their hometown. While the law lets each school district decide whether to accept out-of-district students, students can not be denied the right to leave a district.

“School choice money can be a major factor in determining both the revenue you gain and the revenue you lose for many school districts,” said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “Depending on where you are, districts may really depend on that money to sustain the services they’re able to provide to students … School choice has made districts a little more competitive with each other.”

Since state funding follows the students, school choice has had the unintended consequence of widening the gap between affluent suburban districts and cash-strapped urban and rural school systems, according to some critics. When a student leaves one public school system for another, state funding goes from the sending district to the receiving district in the form of school choice tuition.

To soften the blow for sending districts, the state caps school choice tuition payments at $5,000 per student.

For districts that gain and lose large numbers of school choice students, the aggregate financial impact can be large.

Numbers rise and fall

In fiscal 2017, 38 students from out-of-town districts opted to go to Maynard, bringing in $331,059 in tuition. During that same period, only 12 students left the district.

Compare that to fiscal 1996, when 117 students left the Maynard district, taking with them $531,297 in tuition payments, which was slightly offset by the 37 students that came into the district.

Maynard School Superintendent Robert Gerardi said he believes the change is due, in part, to the investment the town made in the new high school.

“In addition to the physical investments, we have created new and innovative programs including NAEYC accredited preschool and kindergarten, K-5 Spanish Immersion, 4-6 computer sciences and sixth-grade Latin as well as expanded language offerings in grades six through 12,” he said.

Because fewer students are leaving, and more out-of-town students are opting in, Gerardi said, there have not been many choice seats available for the last two years.

School choice revenue in the Nashoba Regional School District, which includes the towns of Bolton, Lancaster and Stow, has declined, largely due to a 2015 decision to end the school choice program because of concerns over space issues, particularly at the high school.

At the peak of the program, in 2013, the Nashoba district received $1,169,210 from school choice, according to the DESE. In 2017, school choice revenue decreased to $579,237.

Charter enrollment impact greater

Aldo Petronio, Brockton’s chief budget officer, said the impact of school choice has been minimal compared to charter schools. Because of the cap on school choice tuition, Brockton loses $5,000 per student leaving on school choice. Each student who leaves for a charter school, however, draws more than $11,000 in funding away from the district, he said.

Koocher said similar concerns are common in urban districts losing large numbers of students to charter schools.

“If a charter school comes in and disrupts the entire economy of scale, that can be enraging to a district,” Koocher said. “With school choice at $5,000 per kid, you’re willing to live with that even if you’re not happy with it. But with charters, you could lose $18,000 per kid. It’s a white hot, if not blue hot, public policy issue because you can really cripple a district with a charter school draining the money.”

Marketing themselves

In recent years, many public schools have undertaken more efforts to market themselves to parents in the community, highlighting programs and success stories. The intent is to retain some of the families thinking about sending their children elsewhere.

Milford Superintendent of Schools Kevin McIntyre said such outreach efforts have become much more common throughout the state.

“I would say a decade ago, a lot of schools didn’t necessarily have to market to their own residents,” he said. “Now we find we have to share all the great things that are happening in the Milford Public Schools on a regular basis with members of our community.”

Gerardi said Maynard schools have done little in the way of promotion.

“The positive culture about education in the community has been mostly word of mouth,” he said.

Multimedia journalist Holly Camero contributed to this story.

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